SAN FRANCISCO — Jiday Ugbaja scored 19 points but the San Francisco State men's basketball team fell 77-64 at Cal State East Bay on Thursday at Pioneer Gymnasium.
The first-place Pioneers (19-5/14-4 CCAA), who are receiving a vote in the most recent NCAA Division II NABC national poll, remain tied with UC San Diego (18-6/13-4 CCAA), who also won, atop the CCAA standings. Despite the loss, the Gators (14-8/10-7 CCAA) remain in fourth place in the CCAA behind third-place Cal Poly Pomona (15-5/13-5 CCAA).
- Ugbaja's double-digit performance was his team-leading 15th of the season. He did it on 7-of-14 shooting. Ugbaja also dished out a team-high five assists, bringing his season total to 74.
- Jordan Balser, coming off a career-high 31-point performance, added 12 points in the loss.
- Ugbaja and Balser shared the team lead with six rebounds apiece.
- The Gators were held to just 6-of-21 (28.6 percent) shooting from deep. SF State is just 1-5 when held to under 30 percent from deep.
- Ant Navarrete led all players with 22 points for the Pioneers on 11-of-15 shooting.
- CSUEB's Patrick Marr added 19 points on 8-of-12 shooting and led all players with 11 rebounds.
- Juwan Anderson set a new program single-game record for the Pioneers with 16 assists, compared to 11 total by the Gators. CSUEB dished out 28 assists total.
Five minutes in, back-to-back three-pointers from
Jase Wickliffe and
Ryne Williams gave the Gators an early 10-4 lead. Three consecutive
Tyler Jackson layups powered a 10-0 run and the Gators led 20-7 with seven and half a minutes to go in the half. Over the seven-minute span in which the Gators built their largest lead, they also held CSUEB to 0-of-12, including 0-of-9 from deep. The Pioneers countered with a 10-2 run in less than two minutes. Anderson's sixth assist of the half found Marr for a three-pointer and Marr tied the game two trips later with a layup that made it 28-28 with 2:09 to go in the half. SF State missed a layup and a pair of free throws only to see the Pioneers take the lead at halftime thanks to another Marr layup.
Marr scored the first bucket of the second half, though the Gators twice tied it early in the second half on buckets from Wickliffe and Zane Paddon. However, after being held to 38.2 percent (13-of-34) in the first 20 minutes of action, the Pioneers came out of the locker room at halftime on fire and shot 64.3 percent (18-of-28) in the second half. The deficit grew as large as 14 and the Gators never got closer than down by eight.
The Gators head to Cal State Monterey Bay on Saturday, February 16 for a 3 p.m. tipoff. The Gators then return home for the final two regular season home games of the season, Purple Out on Thursday, February 21 and Senior Day on Saturday, February 23. Be sure to follow San Francisco State men's basketball on Twitter and Instagram at @sfstate_mbb.
